


one yes (and the world implodes)

by CastleGachi



Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki Gift Exchange 2019, Albino Hidan (Naruto), Alternate Universe - College/University, Autistic Uchiha Itachi, College, F/M, Gen, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, let's just accept that they're all idiots and move on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22056640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CastleGachi/pseuds/CastleGachi
Summary: Deidara will ask Itachi out on a date, even if it's the last thing he does.*written for the Akatsuki Gift Exchange 2019*
Relationships: Deidara/Uchiha Itachi, Hidan/Kakuzu (Naruto), Konan/Nagato | Pain/Yahiko
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33
Collections: Akatsuki Gift Exchange





	one yes (and the world implodes)

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for Cruria over on tumblr for the Akatsuki Gift Exchange 2019!
> 
> i hope you like it, and have a wonderful new year everybody!

It's the end of summer and humid enough to fill a pool. The packed campus streets are starting to reek of sweat, the gas of laboring cars clogging up the rest. Deidara's own taxi had zigzagged out half an hour ago, and he's left to lug his overpacked duffle and backpack in the direction he thinks is his new house.

He unsuccessfully blows the curtain of blond off his sticky cheek, and has to catch his art folders as they slip, due to armpit sweat again. Whatever. It is what it is. "Oi, dude!" he calls at who he thinks is a guide or RA, "The Akatsuki House, you know it, yeah?"

She blinks, looks him up and down, as if trying to pinpoint a flaw – and he has enough pettiness to bare his teeth in a grin. He gets a frown alongside directions, and the busy-bodied families and the giddily anxious students fall behind as he treks further into the campus streets.

It's quieter by the residential houses of the campus, doors thrown wide open, faint music busting out from different houses while older students, quieter and calmer and firmer in the shoulders than the other newbies, fill their summers back inside. He doubts that'll last long but it's simple enough to find the quiet, slightly abandoned house cramped in the back of a street with a far-too-large front lawn, and the large red clouds messily painted on the rooftop.

Home sweet home.

On the front porch is a dude, hair a vivid and blood red, creaking in a rocking chair like a contemplative nan – and he stands, tall and slim, as Deidara treks into view. On his t-shirt is a graphic of a cloud hugging the earth, and the words 'honor thy mother' printed in scripture above it.

The red-haired man smiled, it almost looks genuine, "You must be Deidara…" he hummed, walks down the porch and outstretches a hand, "I'm Nagato Uzumaki. We spoke on the phone –" he starts, and Deidara nods and doesn’t take the hand.

He might've already paid the university a fuck-ton of less than hard-earned cash, and been forced into a few promises, but he will dip if he doesn't like the joint.

Nagato simply smiled, as if he'd expected it, and waved a hand, " – well let's get you situated, then we'll do the tour –" he headed back up the porch, and Deidara lugged all his belonging after him. He hadn't wanted anyone to touch his stuff anyway.

The house itself was rather small for a student house, staircase started at the door as Nagato led him upstairs, but the vibe felt like the better of the foster home's he'd been stuffed into before his grandpa showed up.

It's the candid pictures framed on the walls, shoes and books and buckets in the hall on a mismatched and colorful carpet, the fist-sized holes and knife-nicks in the walls and furniture. His room is larger than he anticipated. The window is cross-hatched but large, the double bed shoved underneath it has a different wood to the cupboard and desk of drawers and the large table. The lightbulb is uncovered and a stark white.

" …if you're missing something, don't hesitate to ask – we have a little bit of everything lying around…" Deidara left his bags as Nagato took him on a tour, the upper level consisted of a thin hall that took a sharp right, and bedrooms for all the members that surrounded it. From the other seven that lived there only Konan and Sasori were around.

Konan was a short, purple-haired woman with an impressively smudged eyeliner, and the stare of the perpetually disinterested. She was apparently neck-deep in research for her computer science doctorate, and blankly informed him that she kept to her own schedule and she'd make his life miserable if it was disrupted. She then kissed Nagato's cheek, and descended the stairwell to heat-up leftovers – the two were 'life partners' with another dude who'd already graduated out, and Deidara didn't really understand how'd it happened but kudos, he guessed.

Sasori, on the other hand, was a short-sighted bitch. The tail end of his grand tour ended in the kitchen, where Sasori was bent over a book on neo-realistic art techniques, and refused to see how those carbon-copy inspirations and cookie-cutter art-styles were the anti-theses of all that was real art! He had deemed Deidara an inexperienced brat, and bestowed Konan and Nagato an unimpressed and confrontational look.

"A little friction is natural –" Nagato intoned. He filled a glass with water and it was the only sound in the sudden silence, a single pale eye flashed at Sasori, " – as long as everything is kept civil."

Sasori swallowed and nodded, "Noted."

Nagato smiled around his first sip of water, and Sasori waved a short hand in farewell, which Konan hummed at, and tucked himself into the couch so that only his nearly neon red hair was visible. Somehow the house didn't feel any less warm than it had before.

Deidara found himself at the kitchen table with steaming lasagna beneath his nose and opposite salt and pepper shakers shaped like deformed birds, being lightly interrogated with added tips and tricks of the university trade from Nagato and Konan. The lasagna was good, the resource-sharing unexpected but nice, good as well.

Nagato patted Deidara's back at the end of lunch, his smile somehow warmer than before, "We knew you'd do well here," he said, and Deidara felt an uncomfortable prickle at the pride he didn't deserve yet. Konan guffawed at his expression, handed him a paper crane and headed upstairs with a full coffee cup.

The next two days he set up his room, pinning up designs and spreading out sketches, organizing his work desk, stacking his art supplies into cubicles and lining his books on the shelves. His clothes were thrown into semi-coherent piles inside his cupboard.

He took a shuttle into town and it had darkened by the time he left the second art supply store, all the supplies were average quality and overpriced but he'd ordered his favorite brand of clay – with a two week wait, ugh – and stocked up on glow in the dark paint because he's feeling inspired and with a little blackout he can make mark in this little town. 

By nightfall a few parties start up, wayward students scavenging for interest in huddles. The warm streetlight doesn't reach the Akatsuki's front porch, and inside Sasori is on the couch again, this time with an albino dude beside him, who is thoughtfully shining a weird pendant with his feet up on the coffee table.

His pinkish eyes are bloodshot and belatedly snap to Deidara, "If it isn't the fresh fucking meat," he raspingly laughed, and he licks his lips like a seventy's villain. He has the slightest suspicion he knows who this via what Nagato and Konan have told him. Sasori tuts in disapproval, probably at the language, like the old geezer that he is.

Deidara arches an unimpressed brow, "And what are you supposed to be, yeah?"

Albino Dude barks a laugh, rolls to a stand, and spreads his arms wide, like a superstar beckoning an adoring crowd. "The names Hidan, cocksucker, the eternally faithful priest to our Lord and Savior, Almighty Jashin –"

"The only God in this house is me, Hidan," Nagato calls from the kitchen, smirk audible.

Hidan throws a fist but his feet are planted, " – HEATHEN!"

Nagato happily waved his wooden spoon, open cooking book in his hand as something ominously bubbled on the stove.

Hidan colorfully grumbled all the unsavory sayings while he stretched and flexed, and if it wasn't for the grunge look and potty mouth, Deidara would've pegged him as a fuck boy.

He shot Deidara a smarmy look as he cocked a hip, "You want to be fucked blondie best take a fuckin number or start bruising your – ugh –"

Deidara extracted his knee from Hidan's groin and scowled as Hidan breathlessly cupped himself, like it'd been a nice surprise rather than an attack at Hidan's chances to reproduce. "Feisty shit –"

"For all that bark I bet you've got no bite, yeah," he sneered and Hidan perked up, like Deidara had propositioned him. He feels a pulse of pity at Hidan's big head, "Bro, that doesn't mean I want in on your train wreck, yeah." He had to understand that because Deidara will blow him up, and he doesn't want to fuck up his place here just yet.

Hidan loudly whined, a toddler hearing he's not about to get desert before dinner – "What the hell are you doing now?" a man descended from the staircase, barefoot. His dark muscular frame was heavily scarred, and his hair was wrapped in a dark scarf, which made his lime green eyes a shock. It's a look with a story attached and his scowl is the refusal to spread it.

"Get upstairs," his arms bulged as he crossed them, but he didn't move, like he fully expected Hidan to remain where he stood.

Hidan sneered, and it looked fond, his brow cocked in challenge, "And how in Jashin's glorious hell will you be making me, fuckton?"

"Rule 32, Hidan," Nagato called out.

Sasori is completely blank faced, textbook and sketchbook tucked aside as if to watch better, and says, "And it was just getting interesting, Leader."

Hidan loudly guffawed and cocked his hip out, "You old pervs always did want a piece of this –"

"If you want anything in that ass you better head back upstairs," the man declared. Deidara sighed, so it took about 24 hours for the horndogs to scramble out the woodwork.

Hidan's face squashed, like he didn't understand that sequence of words, but flexed his hands behind his head anyway, as if tempting the man to take those words back. Deidara doubts Hidan has enough tact and or charm to tempt anybody.

The man's lime eyes hardened and darkened, and his throat bobbed in a swallow. 'Kay then, maybe Hidan had enough charm for this.

Hidan's mouth cocked, "If you're really looking for a dick that's all bark and no bite, blondie," he snickered and obscenely gestured at the man on the stairwell, and Deidara's mouth curled back.

"Don't include me, yeah," he said, and Hidan's pink eyes are completely open, and Deidara's not surprised to realize there's not a single thought insight.

In the meanwhile, the man narrowed his eyes at Deidara, as if to warn him off the idea of chumminess, and respectfully nodded to Nagato. He treaded back up the stairwell, and Hidan abruptly panicked, "Wait – wait, wait, wait – ah, shit fuck, your cock if fucking HUGE KAKUZU, GIVEN FROM JASHIN HUGE – KAKUZU, KAKUZU!"

Hidan vaulted the sofa, trampled up the stairwell, pride and challenge completely forgotten as his hand latches onto Kakuzu's wrist, and Deidara is displeased to witness Hidan licking his lips, as Kakuzu grabs him back, hauling Hidan further into the upstairs hall – a door slams shut.

Sasori had already returned to his sketchbook, and Nagato refocused on his latest stew. Deidara sighed, no wonder this place had vacancies and took a chance on him, he's lightweight compared to these whackos. He shouldered his backpack, "What's rule 32, anyway?" he asked as he headed upstairs.

"Do not involve housemates in flirtations and or with your sexual lives," Sasori recited, and turned a page in his textbook, "Without express permission, of course."

Nagato hummed out, "The rulebook is on the shelf above the microwave." Something splatters in the kitchen, and Deidara hears Nagato depressed exhale, before he left the kitchen and wipes his hands on a towel. "Hidan and Kakuzu usually require an…adjustment period to new members, but they're perfectly harmless," he smiled, "to those inside the house."

"Comforting, huh," Deidara muttered. It didn't really matter, he could probably take Kakuzu in a fight, if he caught him off-guard (and his art always did), and he can definitely take the goth fuckboy.

A few weeks later, when he's groggy-eyed over a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, Hidan proudly proclaims himself the local drug dealer and informs Deidara that he only dealt to spread the word of Jashin, and pay for his 'blasphemously fucked' student debt for his slow-tracked Religious studies bachelor – and, he'd made sure to add, that Kakuzu was the only 'hot fucking bastard' who took a look at his life and 'stepped the fuck up'.

Deidara, cheek plumed on his hand, his cereal crunched as he grumpily scrubbed gunk from his eye, "Lucky you," he yawned. Hidan's cocked grin is exceptionally bright, his barked laugh sharp, before he stuffed a toast in his mouth and bolted out the front door.

Kakuzu is also a clinical workaholic and control-freak, and the only reason he still lives in the Akatsuki house is because he's too cheap to rent (or buy) somewhere better. Konan tells him that Kakuzu is a consultant accountant to two international organizations, is polishing off a doctorate in economics, runs the household finances, and handles the books for Hidan's 'business'.

He's come home after class a few times to find Kakuzu's covered head passed out on one of Hidan's body parts, a pool of crumpled paperwork around them. That first time Hidan spread two fingers and wagged his tongue, saucy wink and all, as if to say his mouth is still free – and Deidara smothered his snicker with a dark sneer. It wouldn't do good to encourage the asshole.

Early on he realized that they're both cracked in the head, loved that about each other and deserve each other all the more for it.

On that first night in the Akatsuki house he's beneath the blankets, door locked, dusk light slit through his curtains, the bed uncomfortably firm and the sheets already tangled, he's starting to believe he's where he's supposed to be.

His sleep is heavy black stretch only broken by his alarm clock and he grumbles awake, trudging out to brush his teeth and body-slams into someone – a hitch, two stumbles, their arms pinwheel, his dead brain reboots and he abruptly remembers his bedroom is at the top of the staircase –

He flings out a hand and catches the dude by the shirt and –

Hot dude, very- _very_ hot dude. His eyes are of the darkest black, thick lashes and heavy lidded, exhausted and somehow vibrant, downright dangerous and handsome, and he can't breathe with the hurricane of butterflies that'd imploded from a locked box deep inside him. The dude's beautiful eyes smile, "Thank you –" and Deidara panics.

His hand snaps open and hot dude barely manages to startle before gravity deems his fate obsolete and drags him downwards, "…damn," he croaks as his empty hand flexes and hot dude tumbles down the staircase, an undignified roll as he tries to steady himself, the banister shudders as hot dude knocks into it and Deidara sympathetically winces.

In an instant shout, a big hulking man in a black tank top dashes through the front door and catches hot dude around the ribs, "It's been three minutes, Itachi!" he huffs, and Itachi winces, practically swallowed in the man's tall bulky form.

Itachi frowns, rubbing his hip and brushing back his hair – it drips, disorganized, off his hand – and Deidara remembers himself enough to swallow: "Fuck. Are you okay, dude?" he jumps the last few steps, "You didn't break anything, did you, yeah?" Itachi faintly scowls, rumpled and bad-idea hot.

"I am fine," he accuses, voice so deep it makes the hair on his arms prickle, and Deidara swallows around the lump in his throat. Itachi pats the very muscular arm around his ribs, and insists, "I do not have a penchant for trouble, Kisame. You do not have to worry so," like it's a sentence he's said many times before, and he expects he'll have to say it again.

Kisame loudly guffaws, "It always seems to find you though, doesn't it?" and releases Itachi with a pat on the back, and looks down with beady somehow warm black eyes at Deidara. He outstretches a hand, "You must be the new kid, Deidara. I'm Hoshigaki Kisame…"

Deidara drags his eyes to find Kisame's shark-like smile, it wobbles, as if something is hilarious, before looking down at the silent Itachi. He gratefully returns to find the dark, heavily lashed eyes centered on him, and his heart kicks into overdrive. Itachi blinks, "…I'm Uchiha Itachi. It's – welcome," he outstretches a polite hand.

Itachi's hand is cold and slightly calloused, fingers long and thin, and Deidara's face prickles in heat. He takes his hand back and tries not to fiddle too much with his bedhead, "Um, thanks, yeah…didn't mean to drop you earlier, so huh, yeah, sorry –" he abruptly drops the lock of blond he'd been brushing onto his shoulder.

Wow, not cool, dude. He needs to get over himself. 

He feels seen beneath Itachi's focused stare, a gleam of red cradles his black eyes, it's only a reflection of a raincoat from the nearby hangar, but…Deidara licks his mouth, hands flexed, like there's a line of gunpowder inside him about to implode, and he has the distinct exhilaration of not knowing when.

"It's no problem," Itachi says, deep voice contemplative. Kisame snorts. Itachi's shoulders jump, surprised, and he shakes himself free. "It's fine. I sometimes forget where I'm going – what I'm doing, where I am – Kisame says it's because I'm preoccupied with the intricacies of life. I think that's just a nice way for him to say that I'm often distracted by my own thoughts, and my attempts to organize them, which makes life difficult for him as my self-appointed 'bodyguard' –" he punctuates with two defined quotation marks, and Deidara is sort of smitten.

" – a position he is fond of, I'm assured. Even if I don't necessarily understand his proclivities towards it. Even so I am very fond of him, and consider him a dear friend, even if he does bewilder me at times –" he says with upmost seriousness, and it feels full, somehow, " – but that could just be because he's old."

"Brat," Kisame loudly laughs.

Itachi's smile is unearthed, genuine and whole, and it softens the harsh lines of exhaustion, and Deidara's heart gives a sudden painful lurch. "It was nice meeting you –" he smiles at Deidara, and brushes past him with a scent of mint and musk and apricot, " – I'm going to start unpacking my belongings now."

"Yeah, huh," he swallows, "You too, yeah."

He watches Itachi leave, and doesn't hate it. The intense clouds begin to dissipate, and he wants to poke and prod, and see what else he can find inside, and if it'll make him feel as stunned as Itachi's warm smile and cold hand had before.

"Organic chem and art, right?" Kisame asks, and Deidara snaps his head back.

He nods, "Yeah. What about you and – and him, yeah?"

"I'm finishing my Masters in International Relations," his shark-like grin is crooked and proud, and he hoists a suitcase onto his shoulder like it's simply an empty cardboard box. He thumbs up the stairwell, "Itachi's doing a joint Bachelors and Masters in Law and Business."

His mouth pulls back, looking back up the stairwell like he's trying to cop a look, "Really, yeah?" It doesn't feel…right, it sounds bland and shallow, unimaginative, and Itachi doesn't feel anything like that.

"He likes parts of it," Kisame offers, and heads upwards, and Deidara takes a step forward before he can stop himself. Kisame's brows curve like a wave, and Deidara folds his arms and scowls, like he isn't that interested.

"How do you too know each, yeah, you don't look like –" he cuts himself off. Kisame and Itachi look they're from different worlds. Kisame has to be in his mid-thirties, bulky and muscular, scars beneath his wrinkling eyes and a bandana around his forehead. He looks like he eats metal for breakfast, fixes up monster trucks in his spare time, and thinks that 250 pounds is a small weight to bench press.

Itachi wears a sweater vest, thick frames perched on his nose, silky black dripped off his shoulders, outfit well-maintained, dark and inaccessible to the common folk. His eyes are black holes, where stars fizzle out and die. His face deceptively soft, words gracefully spoken, and it doesn't feel like a lie but it also doesn't feel like the truth.

He thinks, beneath the surface, in his content of character, is someone _real_ and human in a way that makes Deidara feel like he'll be known.

"I'm a friend of his cousin's," Kisame waves off and tips his head, "Known the brat since he was thirteen. He had braces, if you're wondering," he says, and Deidara's mouth twitches.

He hefts the suitcase higher, "You'll fit in here, kid, I can tell. Just don't call Sasori's puppets 'dolls' and stay out of Itachi's candies," Kisame huffs as he heads up the stairs, "Hidan did that once, and a week later he's bursting into my Global Democratization lecture and is begging me to call him off."

Deidara calls up, intrigued despite himself, "Yeah, what'd he do?"

"No clue – " Kisame hollers and shrugged, " – I wouldn't try to find out though."

His face twitches because he really does want to find out. From his room, a second alarm blares and Deidara grumpily cursed, trudged up the stairs to finish what he started. He doesn't actually want to be late for orientation day.

**Author's Note:**

> chapter two to come soon ~~~*~**~*


End file.
